


tonight the lie's alright

by salamoonder



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Huddling For Warmth, Making Out, Multi, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:00:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29580621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salamoonder/pseuds/salamoonder
Summary: Astrid reflects on the past while she and Wulf are tailing the Mighty Nein.
Relationships: Astrid/Eodwulf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 3
Kudos: 54
Collections: Blumenkrew Fics





	tonight the lie's alright

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers...sorta? for ep 126? in the hypothetical world where astrid and wulf personally followed the nein, this would actually take place a few episodes ago.
> 
> title taken from "walk through the fire" by dan barry.
> 
> my tiny blumendrei heart is exploding, that is all.

Eiselcross is fucking  _ cold. _

Astrid knew this going in, of course, but it was an entirely different thing when your boots were frozen to the ground and any magical means of creating heat were--for the moment at least--unwise. She stands up, wincing at the ache in her muscles as she unfolds from her crouch, and begins pacing in a small circle.

Eodwulf tips his head back in her direction to frown wordlessly.

“It’s freezing, Wulf,” she hisses through her teeth.

“You’re getting soft,” he says flatly, and only the slightest twitch of his lips lets her know that he’s teasing her.

“They won’t see me,” Astrid assures him. “Not while they have so many other things to worry about. And not from so far away.”

“The firbolg--”

“--is distracted,” Astrid finishes. “They all are. Please just let me walk.”

Wulf lets out a long sigh that sends clouds of steam into the air, but he turns back towards where the Mighty Nein and the Tomb Takers have stopped to rest. They’re all little more than specks in the distance, but Astrid can just barely see them milling around, and the smoke from their fire rises clear as a signal into the bleak sky. For a moment Astrid allows herself to remember the days at the academy when all three of them would sit together in front of the fire, huddling for warmth. Sometimes, if he could feel her shivering, Bren would stick a hand up her shirt and rest it on the small of her back, and the heat would soak into her skin like a salve. Wulf would put his head in Bren’s lap, take the book from his hand, and read aloud to them both while Bren stroked his hair.

Moments like these have been popping into Astrid’s head quite frequently in the past few weeks. There’s a solid wall between her present life and her school days, but lately she’s been letting it come down. It’s not as though there’s much else to do in this frozen wasteland besides torture herself with the bittersweet thought of all three of them together.

Wulf clears his throat. “Astrid.”

“Yes?”

“You’re kicking a hole in our snowbank.”

“I don’t think the snowbank minds.”

Wulf just tilts his head at her, and she sits back down, shaking snow off the toe of her boot. “You said you were pacing because you were cold,” he says, still flat and matter of fact.

Astrid groans. “What do you want from me, exactly?”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure if I can acquire a ‘what’s wrong’ at the moment, Wulf.”

Wulf ignores her snark, tilting his gaze further until she squirms under the heat of his stare, finally redirecting her gaze down to her gloves.

“I miss him too,” he says. It’s somewhat unexpected--Astrid is used to Wulf’s sullen, pensive silences going on until she says what he wants to hear. This feels like a gentle nudge.

“He’s alive,” says Astrid simply. “That’s enough.”

“Is it?” Wulf asks.

“It has to be.”

Wulf turns his head away, squinting back across the white expanse towards the two adventuring parties. “Of course.”

Those two words drive Astrid  _ crazy _ \--they’re Wulf’s go to phrase, when he doesn’t want to argue. Rather, when he’s scared to argue. They manifest most often around Trent, but she hears them in response to herself far too often. She’s not Trent. She’s not even Bren before he left, though she badly wanted to be. But Trent made his choice, stacked the order of things and the dynamics just so.

They’re operating on a broken system now, and have been for eleven years.

“Wulf.”

“Mm.”

“I’m cold.”

“You mentioned.”

“Wulf...I’m  _ cold.” _

He raises an eyebrow at her, questioning, and she reaches out and seizes his collar. He inhales sharply. “Ah.  _ Cold. _ Alright.”

It’s not furiously passionate or anything--after all, they’re both stiff with cold and exhausted from walking--but it is, at least, warmer. After a long, searching moment, Wulf bites at her lip, and she shoves him into the snow on impulse. He yelps and pulls away, eyes wide. “I thought you were cold?”

Astrid shrugs. “I...forgot?”

He snorts, amused, and in another second he’s on top of her, rolling her into the snowbank. It’s soaking into her hair, melting into her boots, and she seizes a handful of his hair to pull him down closer to her. It feels good to lie down despite the sharp cold of the snow at every point of exposed skin, and Wulf is warm and solid. She stops kissing him to grasp him by the shoulders and wiggle out from under him and position them chest to chest, panting.

This...this  _ whole thing... _ has mostly been about sex for longer that Astrid cares to think about. Of course she loves Wulf--of course she does. But these days she doesn’t need love. She needs distractions. And Wulf is quite happy to oblige, but at the moment Astrid can’t quite think of anything more miserable than sex below freezing, and she can’t force her legs to work long enough to convince herself to get up and keep pacing again.

So she just...leans into him.

For a long, tense moment, Wulf just lays there, stiff, one hand still resting lightly on her shoulder. Then he pulls her tight against his chest, and Astrid has to hide her sigh of relief.

“They’re going to start moving soon,” he warns.

“I know.”

“We shouldn’t stay still for too long.”

“I know.”

The silence feels less like a lack of noise, and more like some great cosmic force has descended on the land and sucked the very concept of sound from it. Astrid clenches her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

“Your plan will work,” says Wulf suddenly.

“You don’t know that.”

“They always work,” Wulf counters gently. “Your plans are perfect.”

Astrid feels her heart drop a little. She wishes it didn’t have to be her that he was agreeing with like that--and then she remembers that, really, she should be wishing that he didn’t blindly follow anyone at all, not for Bren to be back so they could both follow someone else’s orders.

_ I’m just tired, _ she thinks.  _ I’m just tired, and I miss being tired under someone who cares whether I live or die. _

Her eyes flutter closed. Wulf will wake her when they need to move.

**Author's Note:**

> ps every one of my drei fics is sort of part of my blumendrei universe? i'm working on a massive trilogy at the moment but i'm only posting it once the whole thing's done. i'm at something like 20k right now so we'll see how it goes.


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